Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
Burlington Contemporary is the Burlington Magazine’s free online platform for reviews and research on international contemporary art.
A QUARTER OF a century after its opening, the Musée d’Orsay has undergone its first serious refurbishment and redisplay. Some elements of Gae Aulenti’s original design remain virtually intact, notably the always problematic cabinet-sized spaces, with their over-designed embattled façades, that face onto the vast central nave; but on the top floor the obstructive metal arcading in the space that used to house Post-Impressionism has been swept away, leaving an open gallery that will be used as a secondary temporary exhibition space. However, the principal transformations are the wall-colours of the galleries and the overall layout and sequence of the various sections.
Although the extant œuvre of Jean Fouquet is relatively small and largely confined to manuscripts, it is somewhat surprising that no scholar has previously undertaken a book-length study in English of an artist who in France has a stature equal to that of Van Eyck in Flanders or Masaccio in Italy. If for this reason alone, Erik Inglis’s beautifully illustrated Jean Fouquet and the Invention of France deserves a warm welcome.
deserves a warm welcome.
Manet’s painting of an Amazone (1882-83) is discussed in response to its exhibition in Manet inventeur du Moderne at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, in 2011.
Caricatural prints by Honoré Daumier of works at the Salons of 1840 and 1841.
A supposedly lost painting of St Jerome (1874) by Jean-Léon Gérôme was rediscovered during a collections reorganisation of the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, in 2011.
A portrait (c.1799–1800) by Pierre Chasselat is identified as the famous surgeon Ange Bernard Imbert-Delonnes, who removed cancerous tumours in post-Revolutionary France. The drawing was recently acquired by the Wellcome Library, London.
The rediscovery of a bronze sculpture by Augustin Dumont of the Genius of Liberty (1835), once on the clock tower at Trentham Hall, Staffordshire.
An examination of Maurice Denis’s Définition du Néo-traditionnisme (1890), a key text on early Modernism written when Denis was only nineteen years old.
Reflections on Degas’s sculpture, notably the small-scale Woman washing her left leg, originally made by the artist in the 1890s and cast in the 1920s after his death.
An examination of the new two-volume William Bouguereau catalogue raisonné of paintings, published by the Antique Collectors’ Club in 2010.
